Interview and preview by Ginnie Liang
Local theatre Po Art Studio will stage a series of play-reading performances this weekend, the screenplay creation materials of which were provided by local people in the past three years about their life during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Macau Post Daily talked to the four screenwriters last week in the theatre’s rehearsal room in the Praia do Manduco (Ha Van) district, about how they combined these ordinary and precious stories provided by local people into a collection of real but partly bizarre stories.
According to Po Art Studio, play reading is the most basic version of a play. Actors deliver their lines directly from the script with minimal direction and movement, but in character and with gusto. There are few technical elements such as props, costumes or lighting, but someone reads the stage directions aloud to give the audience the context for each scene.
Four screenwriters explored the creative direction from the many submissions that have been collected locally since June, and combined the material to create four scripts, aiming to explore the humanistic value of the materials provided by local people’s submissions, and then created the new scripts.
Quarantine
Did you ever undergone mandatory hotel quarantine during the pandemic?
Mok Keng Fong, a local playwright and radio DJ, created a one-man show in which the main character is undergoing quarantine in a hotel room. “When one’s loneliness reaches an extreme, that’s when things get interesting,” Mok said, adding that the protagonist uses a different angle to see the absurd things happening in the world.
“Everyone needed a listener during the pandemic,” Mok said, recalling why he created a character who talks to himself while he was isolated in a closed space, adding, “Because I’m afraid of being alone. When I’m on my own, I get scared and my thoughts go wild.”
Mok did not reveal too much about the details of the story, concluding that “it’s very down to earth, funny, crazy, ridiculous, and all wrapped in jokes,” Mok said, inviting people to see his play this weekend.
Take-aways
Take-aways are the thing that people became most familiar with during the pandemic, as members of the public often were not able to eat in restaurants. But what if, in a parallel universe, delivery men were the only way for people trapped at home to get information from the outside world?
Kelvin Chao Keng Fong, who holds a master’s degree in Screenwriting and Drama composition at the University of Glasgow in the UK and has been actively involved in local theatre production in recent years, created a story about an old woman and her neighbour during the ongoing pandemic, who are dependent on each other for survival.
The old woman has a son who works as a food delivery man and has been separated from his mother for five years because of the pandemic, Chao said, adding: “I wanted to portray a dystopian world in the story – a time and place where humanity is destroyed and society is in chaos.”
Chao said that he expressed the idea through the story that the information we received during the pandemic was limited and filtered, all through the mainstream media, and the take-away is a metaphor for the information brought back from the outside, allowing people trapped in a small space to know the outside world.
What is the real “take-away” of the story? Chao said he’ll leave it to the audience to think for themselves.
See it through others’ eyes
Beryl To Weng Kei is a journalist. In her spare time, she has developed her talent for drama, writing plays based in Macau and telling stories about Macau in stage plays.
In her self-written and self-directed drama, “I changed from criticising some social issues like I usually did in the past, and instead, tried to enter other people’s lives and experience other people’s worlds with other people’s visions,” said To.
To said her stories include tales of transgender people, people who gave up on a relationship because of the pandemic, and people who recalled their own stories while in quarantine.
“The transgender people in my story only dare to come out of the closet and exist in the world with the identity they wanted during the pandemic where wearing a mask was a must,” said To, adding that she hoped the audience would pay more attention to people who they are not usually in contact with, and gain more understanding about the pain of others.
Family’s separation & reunion
One of the main planners of the project, Karrion Hui Ka Ion, who graduated from The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA) and works as an actor, presented his first screenwriting work.
Hui described his work as experimental rather than dramatic, and after collecting submissions from members of the public, he was also deeply touched, “I myself did not return to Macau during the three-year pandemic, and there are a lot of things that I have not told people around me.”
Hui said that he created a story in which a student studying outside Macau couldn’t even see his father when he had a car accident, because he was stuck in the hotel undergoing mandatory quarantine.
“However, this tragedy gives the family a chance to rebuild and re-face the relationship among the family members,” Hui said, adding that he wants the audience to think about one question: apart from blood ties, what makes families stay together?
Hui said the Po Art Studio had received about 56 submissions from members of the public since June, and the writers selected and captured vivid details from the material to turn it into a set of plays that they hoped would be performed on the real stage.
Hui welcomes everyone to continue to share their own stories, either online or offline. “Your submission has the opportunity to become a play,” said Hui.
The performance will be held at the 100-year-old heritage building Centro de Cultura e Artes Performativas Cardeal Newman de Macau (CCCN Macau) at 澳門得勝斜路55號地下(55 Calçada da Vitória, ground floor). The tickets costs 80 patacas for each slot and 120 patacas for two slots. The sessions will be held this Saturday and Sunday from 3-5 p.m. and 7-9 p.m. respectively.
These undated handout photos provided by the Po Art Studio show the crew discussing and rehearsing their upcoming play-reading performances.
